Singapore, Sep 2, 2010: GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company, iBio, its development collaborator, Fraunhofer US Center for Molecular Biotechnology – all based in the US – have entered into an agreement to jointly develop and globally market, manufacturing solutions for biopharma and vaccines. based on their respective proprietary technologies. Financial terms have not been disclosed.
This new business initiative combines the value of GE Healthcare’s capabilities and worldwide presence in life sciences, iBio’s highly efficient iBioLaunch plant-based vaccine and therapeutic protein manufacturing platform, and CMB’s advanced vaccine and molecular biology expertise.
iBioLaunch plant-based technology enables the production of vaccine and therapeutic proteins at substantially lower capital and operating costs, than are possible with other technologies. GE Healthcare has developed solutions and offerings including those which enable customers to build processes and facilities based on single-use and ready-to-use technologies.
In this collaboration with iBio and CMB, GE Healthcare will supply bioprocessing products and process expertise for integration with the iBioLaunch platform. It will also support the development of products based on the iBioLaunch platform and product offering.
The manufacturing solutions covered by the agreement include product licenses, technology transfer services, design of upstream and downstream manufacturing processes; supplies of equipment, consumables and related validation support, construction of buildings, facility operations and related financial services.
“This is an exciting development in GE Healthcare’s strategy to deliver more efficient and cost-effective biopharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing technologies,” said Mr Peter Ehrenheim, president and CEO, Life Sciences, GE Healthcare.
“We expect this relationship with GE Healthcare to accelerate and broaden market penetration for our technology through access to GE Healthcare’s existing relationships and its skill and experience with project implementation and process development,” said Mr Robert B Kay, chairman and CEO of iBio. “This is another implementation of our model to affiliate and out-source with best-in-class collaborators like GE Healthcare and CMB as the fastest and lowest risk path to revenue growth.”
“We have already done considerable planning and work with GE Healthcare to prepare for implementation of this agreement,” said Dr Vidadi Yusibov, executive director of CMB and chief scientific officer of iBio. “Therefore, we expect this relationship to start quickly and continue long after its initial three-year term to provide important results for our collective customers as we combine GE Healthcare’s products, skills and relationships with the technology we developed and are implementing in our new Delaware facility.”
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